Notes: This performance included costumed dancers, theatrics that included people being hoisted by cables, artists displaying various props (including Mike Gordon placing cactus props on stage), and innovative lighting that featured large florescent tubes. The second set was a looser jam session and included guest appearances from Dave Grippo on saxophones, James Harvey on trombone, Bobby Hackney on vocals, and Fish on drums. This show marked the debut of “First Tube,” “Sand,” “Mozambique,” and “Last Tube.” While not billed as a Trey Anastasio performance, with Russ and Tony it represents the public debut of the core TAB touring ensemble.

Trey Anastasio is an amazingly creative person. But he is also an amazingly *ambitious* person. Listening to this show, it occurred to me that us phans might forget how so much of what makes Phish special and successful comes from Trey's unique combination of creativity, ambition, and enthusiasm.

Trey had stepped outside of his musical role with Phish before, with Bad Hat and New York!, but online video from this show demonstrates that this evening was more than an informal club gig. The first set featured novel lighting and set decoration, dancers, synth sound effects, and a full hour's worth of debut performances of original material. Trey acknowledges all the people who helped make this happen during "Last Tube", but there are not many creative people who also have enough ambition to bring so many ideas "from the root to the fruit"

"Wighat" is an interesting song in retrospect - Trey was 33 years old at the time, and it's not much of a stretch of the imagination to read the lyrics as a description of an party encounter during the looser Fall 1997 tour. I don't know if Trey was singing the line, "Can I live while I'm young?" with ironic understanding by that point, but it seems to have at least been on his mind.

Phish.net is a non-commercial project run by and for Phish fans under the
auspices of the all-volunteer, non-profit Mockingbird Foundation. This project
serves to compile, preserve, and protect encyclopedic information about Phish
and their music. But we need your help!